Quotes from The Book of Disquiet

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“My past is everything I failed to be.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while. […]. I'm two, and both keep their distance — Siamese twins that aren't attached.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises.
Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was,
I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat.
I was never convinced of what I believed in.
I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through.
Words were my only truth.
When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I'm sick of everything, and of the everythingness of everything.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows... I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn't what we see but what we are.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

“I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory.”
― Fernando Pessoa, quote from The Book of Disquiet

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Popular quotes

“Estoy tan enamorado de ti, y te necesito. Te necesito cada día. Tú eres mi fuerza y mi luz y, sin ti, no soy nada".”
― Sandi Lynn, quote from Forever Us

“- Фин. Мистър Бог не ни обича - тук се поколеба.- Не ни обича, разбираш ли? Само хората могат да обичат. Аз обичам Боси, но тя мен не. Аз обичам дребосъците, но те мен не. Аз те обичам Фин. И ти ме обичаш. Това беше удар под кръста. По дяволите, помислих си. Защо трябваше това да се случи? Сега е загубила доверието си, сигурността. Но се лъжех. Нищо не беше загубено. Анна вървеше с увереността на сомнамбул по въже.
- Той не ме обича като теб, а другояче, милиони пъти по-голямо е.
Явно бях помръднал. Тя се протегна, седна на петите си и се ухили. После се примъкна по-близо до мен. Дали знаеше за онази мъничка болка, която ме беше докоснала? С точността на хирург разряза раната, причинена ми от една искрица ненужна ревност.
- Фин, ти ме обичаш повече от всеки друг. И аз те обичам повече от всеки друг. Но с Мистър Бог е различно. Виждаш ли, Фин, хората обичат отвън навътре и могат да целуват отвън. Мистър Бог обаче те обича отвътре и може там да те целува. Затова е различно. Мистър Бог не е като нас. Само ние сме малко като него. Но не много. Анна беше превърнала оловото в злато. Всички мъдри дефиниции на понятието "Бог" бяха напълно излишни. Милосърдието, любовта и справедливостта бяха само патерици, с които си служехме, за да опишем неописуемото. Анна нямаше нужда от тях.
- Виждаш ли, Фин, Мистър Бог е различен, защото може да довършва нещата, а ние не можем. Аз изобщо никога не мога да престана да те обичам. Ще съм умряла милиони години, преди да престана да те обичам. Но Мистър Бог може да престане, когато поиска, разбираш ли? Затова е различен.
Доста силен удар ми беше нанесла. Първо трябваше да обмисля всичко това, но Анна не ми спести нищо и не ми даде време. Просто продължи да ме обстрелва с тежката артилерия.
- Фин, защо хората правят войни и се убиват?
Простенах, започнах да заеквам. Беше малко множко наведнъж...
- Фин, как се казва, когато искам да кажа, че мисля различно от теб?
Няколко минути изпробвахме различни думи, докато най-накрая открихме тази, която търсеше: мнение.
- Фин, това е разликата. всичко хора имат различни мнения, само Мистър Бог не. Той има всички мнения наведнъж.
В този миг имах едно единствено желание: да се махна от нея, да се махна оттук. Една дълга разходка би свършила работа. Какво искаше това дете, какво беше направила? Бог можеше да довършва нещата, аз не. Е, добре, но какво означаваше всичко това? Струваше ми се, сякаш беше освободила идеята "Бог" от нейните ограничения. Неговото царство беше вечността и Анна разбираше всичко това. Хората имаха ограничен брой мнения, но Бог застъпваше всичките мнения и затова всяко едно от тях беше точно толкова правилно, колкото и всички останали. Дали искаше да каже това? Попитах я и тя доволно кимна. След това избухна в смях.
- Хихи, сега и ти го знаеш, хихи - смееше се тя. - Обаче има и още една разлика. Мистър Бог познава всички неща и всички хора отвътре. А ние ги познаваме само отвън. Затова не можем да говорим отвън за Мистър Бог. Това не е правилно.
Така продължи още четвърт час. Още аргументи, още обяснения. След това ме целуна по носа и каза:
- Не е ли страхотно? Помниш ли книгата за 4те измерения...?
- Да, защо?
- Хихи, сега знам, къде е четвъртото измерение. То е вътре в мен.
Чашата преля. Събрах си целия авторитет и я заплаших:
- Стига толкова. Късно е. Лягай си. Ако не заспиш мигновено, ще те напердаша.
Тя заквича, погледна ме и се ухили. След това се настани в прегръдките ми.
- Ти никога не правиш такива неща - каза, докато заспиваше.”
― Fynn, quote from Mister God, This is Anna

“Teachers loved to say people had potential; that's what teachers did to keep themselves from getting canned. What were they supposed to say-I'm sorry, your kid has no promise whatsoever? She's utterly mediocre in every way?”
― Anne Ursu, quote from The Shadow Thieves

“Learn from your past and be better because of your past,” she would say, “but don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.”
― Trevor Noah, quote from Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

“We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well. Or: Today is the day of the meatloaf. The meatloaf is swell. It is swell but when it is gone the not-having meatloaf will be tragic and the meatloaf man will not come anymore.”
― Tobias Wolff, quote from Old School

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